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Supermarket Systematics at Te Papa’s Senior Science Careers Day

On June 25th, Te Papa hosted its annual Senior Science Careers Day. College students from several area schools came to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a scientist working at Te Papa. Two of us from the Botany team participated in the event: Carlos Lehnebach (Curator) and Heidi Meudt (Research Scientist). We are both plant systematists, which means we name, describe and identify plant species and study their relationships with other species.

The students’ task was to classify them into two plant families based on morphological characteristics. Students worked together in groups and used dissecting microscopes to compare seeds, fruits, and leaves of the fruits and vegetables.

Most groups did a great job as supermarket systematists! They were able to correctly classify ten of the items into two economically important plant families.

Brassicaceae (mustard family)

Solanaceae (potato family)

cabbage

potato

Brussels sprouts

tomato

bok choy

aubergine

broccolini

capsicum

radish

tamarillo

Some also correctly identified the two vegetables that did not belong to either family, which were kumara (sweet potato) and lettuce. Although kumara look very similar to potatoes, they are in a different family (Convolvulaceae) and the students confirmed this by looking at photos of other characteristics of each plant. In the same way, lettuce looks superficially similar to cabbage, but is in the daisy family (Asteraceae).

We hope the students had as much fun as we did doing the Supermarket Systematics activity, and learned a bit about plant systematics and research at Te Papa too!